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B.A.L.L. Lecture Series
All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes
For the past three years, documentary filmmakers Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick have been exploring the underwater world of the Great Lakes with a cutting-edge underwater drone, or “ROV.” Diving to the lake’s greatest depths and filming for hours at a time has allowed the husband-and-wife team to capture never-before-seen footage of the lakes’ most elusive species.
Join these freshwater explorers and their ROV, “Kiyi,” for a “behind-the-scenes” look at their latest documentary, “All Too Clear.” See how quadrillions of invasive mussels have re-engineered the Great Lakes on a scale not seen since glaciers. Organisms of all kinds—from tiny plankton to large fish—are vanishing, creating vast biological deserts. From dazzling shallow-water worlds resembling the Caribbean to the shipwreck of the “Africa,” entombed in mussels 300 feet below—All Too Clear explores the freshwater world like never before.
This lecture will begin with the showing of a 20 minute version of Yvonne and Zach’s award-winning feature-length documentary, followed by the usual talk and Q&A format.
Lecturers – Yvonne Drebert & Zach Melnick
Filmmakers Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick are the founders of Inspired Planet Productions, located on the beautiful Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula in Ontario. For more than two decades, the husband-and-wife team have been shining the spotlight on Canadian nature and history stories, creating more than 40 hours of broadcast documentary, including the 2021 Canadian Screen Award nominated series, “Striking Balance.” For their 2024 series “All Too Clear,” Drebert and Melnick shifted their lens to the underwater world. Using cutting-edge ROVs, they immerse themselves in rarely seen aquatic environments, capturing extraordinary wildlife behaviours, and even discovering the occasional shipwreck.
